Announcement: taking over Folyo

Hi I’m Rob. You got an email from me and Sacha a couple weeks ago explaining how I’m taking over Folyo.

Nice to meet you and all that. :) How are you? It’s 10:06 PM here and I’m laying in bed writing you this email.

I fell in love with Folyo as a user. I used it after graduating from design school and it opened my eyes to new possibilities.

Freelancing on Folyo made it possible for me to build my own business. It also allowed small businesses to discover freelancers like me and compete with bigger companies at a fraction of the cost.

It made me realize that hiring someone for a short-term project could be a better investment than hiring a regular employee.

But I also learned about kinks in this process.

While I thought freelancing was a good investment, I felt bad for clients.

I put myself in their shoes. They had to make design decisions about their project… yet had no real design experience.

To me this was a big disadvantage…

Then I noticed that all of this came down to writing.

Writing was the most important part of most Folyo deals. Yet it was also an after thought for most people. Writing is as a skill isn’t emphasized.

This united the two camps I saw on Folyo.

A designer’s chances of landing a project came down to the short cover letter they wrote.

A client’s chances hiring an amazing designer came down to the job post description that they wrote.

That’s why my favorite feature in Folyo is the character limits designer responses.

It makes every word count.

It makes it easier to read a bunch of replies.

Most important of all, it makes the writing more meaningful.

This meant that anybody could understand the process. You didn’t have to go to design school to pick a designer. You didn’t even have to look at their work.

If you could read a designer response and feel how well they communicated, you could pick a great designer.

As designer, if you could communicate clearly, you could land work as a freelancer.

Once I realized this, things changed.

In just 6 months I made over $30k on Folyo without much of a portfolio.

It changed the way I approached freelance projects because it put communication first.

For clients, the character count also meant their time was more valued. On Folyo, you don’t have to read huge long proposals.

In fact it’s impossible for designers to send huge proposals. What this means is you can review designers with less effort and time commitment.

That makes your business more profitable.

It also opens up new opportunities.

A lot of the clients I worked with would soon ask me to refer developers.

See, development projects happen naturally after design projects. They build off of one another and naturally make projects more profitable. Exponentially.

The problem is as a client, there’s no Folyo for developers.

When I launched Workshop (a service I created) 2 years ago.

A by product was a list of freelance developers who were paying me to find work for them.

But they weren’t normal developers. They were really high quality.

Why? For one they were able to focus on the opportunities I sent them because they had more time.

But two, the type of freelancer that Workshop attracted valued their time so much that they paid me to find work for them.

For small businesses Workshop meant they could post their project somewhere where spam didn’t exist.

The mere fact that freelancers were paying to get access to a project meant they already had skin in the game.

There’s a lot more I’m hoping to cover on this but remember that: a freelancer who values his time, will value yours.

That’s why hourly pricing pits you against a freelancer and actually works against you.

As the new owner of Folyo, I’d like to present Workshop.

You can post a project for a developer (or designer) and get really high quality freelancers who would like to work with you directly in your inbox quickly.

Try it out and let me know what you think. I’ll also be sending you some more stuff on how to work with freelancers soon for free.

Thanks for supporting Folyo (and Workshop)

Warm Regards,

Robert